Young people who can't catch up with the AI boom are starting to become AI shareholders
The president of a country bowed to two entrepreneurs and called them national heroes.
On June 29, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung publicly bowed 90 degrees to Lee Jae-yong of Samsung Electronics and Choi Tae-won of SK Group respectively.
The reason why Lee Jae-myung was so polite is that the AI layout of these two companies not only drove the development of related industries in South Korea but also made many stockholders suddenly become rich overnight.
South Korean stockholders are reveling in the AI wave. Many Chinese stockholders are also taking action, buying related stocks in the AI industry chain, trying to achieve financial freedom by becoming shareholders.
After all, as the AI concept becomes more and more popular, the market values of many players in the industry chain are soaring. In the field of large AI models, Zhipu; in the chip industry, Cambricon and NVIDIA; in the storage industry, SK Hynix and Samsung, their market values have all skyrocketed.
SK Hynix factory
For ordinary people, the soaring market values of these companies bring a fear of being left behind. Buying stocks has, to some extent, become one of the few easy ways to participate.
How should one invest in the AI era? Maybe everyone has their own answer.
Waiting for a Stock in the A-share Market
For stockholder Li Jie, the most important thing this summer is the listing of Changxin Technology.
In order to successfully win the lottery for new shares, he not only withdrew tens of thousands of yuan from his bank deposit but also sold some of his locked-in liquor stocks. He is just waiting to win the lottery for Changxin Technology and then invest all this money at once.
The reason why Li Jie is so optimistic about Changxin Technology is that this company indeed has extraordinary potential in the AI era.
Recently, the AI industry has been developing more and more rapidly, leading to a shortage of storage chips. Therefore, the leading stocks in the industry have generally risen sharply. SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron have all had a good run in the market.
However, SK Hynix and Samsung are listed in South Korea, and Micron is a US company. Li Jie, who works in the traditional industry and focuses on the A-share market, can only watch the stock prices soar helplessly without being able to do anything.
Therefore, when the news that Changxin Technology is about to be listed came, Li Jie immediately smelled the opportunity to get rich and planned to invest all his funds.
As the leading company in China's storage chip industry, Changxin Technology achieved a revenue of 50.8 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026 alone, and its net profit reached 24.7 billion yuan, which is 13 times higher than the net profit of the whole last year.
Some investment institutions predict that after Changxin Technology is listed, its market value will be at least 1 trillion yuan and at most 4 trillion yuan. It is not impossible for it to surpass China Construction Bank, which currently has the highest market value in the A-share market.
The demand for storage chips generated by AI makes Li Jie, who is already middle-aged, feel that he is getting closer and closer to financial freedom. However, he has also missed many investment opportunities before.
In the summer of 2025, Cambricon, a listed company on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the A-share market, saw its stock price rise continuously for many days because it was involved in the concept of AI chips. In just one month, its stock price more than doubled.
Li Jie watched the stock price soar every day. On the one hand, he felt that the opportunity to make money had finally come; on the other hand, he was afraid of becoming the last one to buy the overpriced stock.
After all, there are always voices on the Internet hyping up the AI bubble. Although Cambricon, as the leading company in China's AI chip industry, seems to have a broad market prospect, its increasingly high price-earnings ratio made Li Jie finally choose to wait and see.
At the beginning of 2026, after a small correction, the stock price of Cambricon, which Li Jie had thought was overvalued, started a new round of rise. But this time, Li Jie was no longer hesitant.
Because the stock price of Cambricon has risen from more than 300 yuan in the summer of 2025 to about 1,300 yuan now. The price of one lot is more than 130,000 yuan. Even if Li Jie wants to buy it now, he doesn't have enough funds.
Cambricon in the A-share market
Now, after missing the AI chip market twice, besides applying for new shares of Changxin Technology, Li Jie has also prepared a Plan B for himself: to buy Jiangborun at an opportune time.
The reason why he made such a decision is not only related to the outstanding performance of the leading stocks in the storage industry but also to the advice of a young man.
As an internet celebrity in the investment circle, as early as November 2025, Justin Sun said on his social platform: "In the short term, there is a shortage of chips; in the long term, there is a shortage of energy; and there is always a shortage of storage."
Justin Sun's social platform
Looking back at the past capital market, Li Jie found that this young man, who is jokingly called "Sun the Cutter", has often had his predictions come true in the capital market.
So, Li Jie searched in the A-share market and not only found Changxin Technology but also found its substitute: Jiangborun, which is also involved in the storage chip business.
However, just like when he was facing Cambricon, Li Jie is still hesitant. Since September 2025, the stock price of Jiangborun has multiplied several times, and the latest stock price has reached about 700 yuan.
Li Jie is not sure whether buying Jiangborun now means joining the game halfway up the mountain or standing alone at the top.
Although as an investment guru, Warren Buffett often says: "Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful."
But there are very few people in the world who can truly integrate knowledge and action. Most are ordinary people like Li Jie, who are hesitant when making investments.
Is There a Hierarchy in Investment?
Different from Li Jie, who is involved in the AI industry chain, Tao Tao, a new employee in the same office, has another set of investment methodologies.
Since various domestic large AI models have emerged like mushrooms after rain, Tao Tao has had the idea of letting large AI model companies earn her passive income.
For stock selection, she has only one standard: the company must only focus on large AI models and have no other miscellaneous businesses.
After such a screening, Alibaba with Qianwen, Tencent with Yuanbao, and Baidu with Wenxin were all eliminated by Tao Tao. Among the domestic large AI models, only Kimi, DeepSeek, and Zhipu were selected.
However, Kimi and DeepSeek are not listed yet, and Zhipu has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Ordinary Chinese people need to open a Hong Kong Stock Connect account to buy its stocks. Before applying, the average daily asset in the securities account in the past 20 trading days should not be less than 500,000 yuan.
After some hesitation, Tao Tao, who doesn't have enough funds, chose to fly to Hong Kong in person. She first opened a bank account there and then found a brokerage to open an online account.
However, after all the procedures were completed, Tao Tao found that the Hong Kong stock price of Zhipu had risen from more than 130 yuan at the beginning of its listing to more than 1,400 yuan now, more than ten times the original price.
In this regard, Tao Tao said: "Now, the price of one lot of Zhipu is 140,000 yuan. Before, I couldn't buy it; now, I can't afford it."
Just when Tao Tao was thinking about whether to invest all her savings in Zhipu, a change in policy made her fall into hesitation again.
Recently, the "Regulations of the State Council on Overseas Investment" were announced, making various regulations on the issue of Chinese people's cross-border stock trading.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also issued a document later, stating that for mainland investors opening accounts in Hong Kong, three new regulatory measures have been added, namely, investigating false information accounts opened since 2023, closing dormant accounts with zero balances, and requiring new account holders to promise that the funds do not come from the mainland.
Under the restrictions of these policies, Internet brokerages such as Tiger Brokers and Futu have not only stopped opening new accounts for mainland residents but also only allowed old users to sell stocks and not buy them. Tao Tao, who wants to invest in Zhipu, needs to find a new channel.
Martin, who sits at a desk next to Tao Tao, opened US and Hong Kong stock accounts many years ago. Also interested in the AI industry, he has reaped huge profits in this AI wave.
Therefore, facing Tao Tao's troubles, Martin felt sorry for her on the one hand and thought he was extremely wise on the other hand.
At the same time, after years of experience in the stock market, Martin has also summarized a set of investment experience: that is, only buy leading stocks.
Martin doesn't understand Li Jie's hesitation between Changxin Storage and Jiangborun. He believes that: "A large part of the achievements of companies like Changxin Technology comes from the spillover effect of production capacity caused by the shortage of storage chip orders from leading companies such as SK Hynix and Samsung. Ordinary people who want to earn more money had better focus on the leading stocks in the industry."
However, compared with the Hong Kong and US stock markets, where it is easier for Chinese people to open accounts, SK Hynix, as a leading company in the industry, is listed in the South Korean capital market, and it is more difficult to hold its stocks.
Against this background, some investors who cannot buy its stocks have finally found other investment channels.
In the Hong Kong stock market, the CSOP Double Leveraged SK Hynix Index ETF has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since May 2025. Its price has risen from less than HK$10 to more than HK$140. Especially since the beginning of April 2026, the price of this fund has multiplied more than four times.
Now, the scale of the CSOP Double Leveraged SK Hynix Index ETF has approached HK$90 billion, with a cumulative increase of 800% since the beginning of this year, while the increase of SK Hynix this year is only less than 300%. Investors who dare to use leverage have finally obtained excess returns.
On the other hand, since AI and its related industries are now developing in full swing, many people who dare not or cannot trade stocks will start a "roundabout way" to invest.
Some of them buy funds or indexes in the AI industry chain. For example, the Changxin Innovation Drive Stock Fund, which mainly holds stocks in industries such as AI computing power, optical modules, and chips, has risen by about 200% in the past year and has become the favorite of many "fund investors".
Changxin Innovation Drive on Alipay
Some people have also found that in this wave of AI storage, both SK Hynix and Samsung are listed in South Korea and account for a considerable proportion in the market. So they simply buy the South Korean stock index directly and can also get a lot of investment dividends.
Can All Listed Companies Be Involved in AI?
Why do many new and old investors look for AI concept stocks? The most fundamental reason may be that AI-related investment targets not only have a good current prospect but also great development potential in the future.
After all, many young people today are trying to use AI as a lever to tip the balance of their lives.
For example, some time ago, "raising lobsters" became very popular among young people. Many ambitious people who only lacked teammates used AI to set up one-person companies and started their journey in the business world.
However, the threshold for starting a business with AI is relatively high. For ordinary people to make a profit from it, it not only tests the maturity of the whole project but also the costs of time and energy may be unaffordable.
So, finding a way to make money while lying down and getting passive income when not working has become a new direction for many young people.
In this process, more and more technology companies have ridden on the wave of AI development, and their market values have soared to unimaginable levels. As long as young people hold their stocks, they can enjoy the treatment of passive income.
Therefore, many people are studying AI technology on the one hand and investment experience on the other hand, trying to reach the other side of financial freedom.
Some of them look for high-quality stocks in the AI era based on online information and their own judgments; some simply spend money to sign up for courses and climb the ladder of the capital market through the teachings of teachers.
However, in this mixed market environment, it is very difficult for young people to achieve financial freedom through AI industry investment, but it is easy to lose most of their wealth.
This is because more and more listed companies have also seen this wave of AI rise and started to package themselves with relevant concepts.
For example, Jingtou Development, a real estate company, announced more than two months ago that it would completely divest its real estate business and acquire the equity of an optical chip company from its major shareholder, transforming the company from the real estate industry to the optical module industry.
After the news came out, the stock price of Jingtou Development soared by 340%, rising from 6 yuan in March 2026 to 21 yuan in mid-May.
However, the optical chip company that Jingtou Development wants to acquire, Xi'an Qixin Optoelectronics, not only has an ordinary position in the industry but is also in a loss-making state. Later, the Shanghai Stock Exchange sent an inquiry regarding the stock price fluctuation, and the stock price of Jingtou Development fell accordingly.
There are many companies like Jingtou Development in the A-share market. Among real estate listed companies, Yingxin Development Holdings Changxing Semiconductor, and Shahe Co., Ltd. is preparing to acquire Jinghua Electronics.
Among listed companies in the construction industry, companies such as Golden Mantis and Mona Lisa have also come up with the concept of "AI + semiconductor ceramic substrates", which has made many investors impressed and bought relevant stocks one after another.
From the above examples, we can seem to see that listed companies' involvement in the AI field may not necessarily be out of the need for company development but more of a basic operation to boost the stock price.
And this phenomenon of blindly using the AI flag has also brought considerable interference to young people who want to make value investments.